A democratic stack
Because we think that democratic societies need software that services their needs and embodies their values. FOSS is a first step because open licenses allow sharing and collaboration. But access to source does not guarantee democratic participation. Democracy is a lot harder to build than software and it also takes more time than it takes to go fast breaking things.
Make FOSS more useful to more people
Many FOSS systems live and die within the confines of a source forge. With some luck there might be some documentation or some up to date instructions on how to deploy it. While this is great in and of itself, things can be made more useful to more people. We think that if public money is invested in the development of these systems, making them useful to more people should be a core requirement.
Expand notions of UX design
A lot of the language surrouding UX design is reminiscent of american start-up culture, we like to think a little differently. Folkware is born out of education, the creation and dissemination of knowledge is our foundation. Our goal is to create a professional ecosystem were recent graduates as well as dedicated self-taught people can thrive and create lasting careers by contributing to the development of a more prosocial practice of UX design.
Enrich bridges between disciplines
It takes a lifetime to become a good software developer, it also takes a lifetime to become a good digital product designer. It would take another lifetime to learn all of the things that the other does. We want these disciplines to become more intelligible to one another, less siloed and more respectful of each other’s contributions.